He said that a curious aspect of the storm was that a couple of hours afterward the creeks were down and people who didn't suffer any damage didn't know there had been anything unusual.
After 1863, many returned to their permanent villages that had been established along creeks flowing down from the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Big Cottonwood, Parley's, Emigration and City creeks flowed down sand-bag lined streets in order to manage the overflowing streams.
In times of heavy rainfall, even the sluice gates were unable to regulate the flow of the river which was often swollen by numerous creeks flowing down from higher ground.
Waterfall Gully was one of the hardest hit suburbs: Bob Stevenson, Duty Officer of the State Emergency Service (SES), commented that "There's an area called Waterfall Gully Road, in the foothills, where one of the creeks comes down, and there's quite a few houses affected there... there was 40 or so houses affected on that one road alone".
Remnants of another fortification cling to the top of a low bluff, alongside a creek that tumbles down through the cottonwood, pine and aspen groves.
By the time the coyote had loped to the far bank of the creek and sat down, I had named him.
But there I was suddenly, in a little hollow along a river, and there was a shed I'd built and, now that I think of it, the creek that trickled down off the mountain to the east.
Perhaps it was the buffalo, thousands upon thousands, some grazing, some already bedded down and chewing cud in the gentle warmth of a noonday winter sun, some watering in a clear-running creek that came down from the north, where the valley made a long bed.
Outside the park the creek has cut down into the Devonian Catskill Formation, a reddish sandstone.
